Originally Posted Sunday, November 2, 2014
Quelle dommage.
To wit, yesterday I tried to be a productive boy. In the morning, I worked with three rolls of old black and white film I had developed. I wasn't sure what was on them. Whoa! One roll from my Hasselblad XPan had images from the Obama campaign. I'm not sure which one. And another had images over a year old. The one I've posted here is from my trip to pick up my printer. When was that? Over a year? I don't even remember. Here's Red at lunch. We had a few drinks then bought a bottle of rum that we drank on the two and a half hour drive home. We may have been drunk--I don't remember--but it sure as hell didn't slow us down. We made good time. There is little like the memories from a road trip. Nor of black and white slightly blurry photos from anything at all. There is a magic in black and white film that you can't get from digital. O.K. I'm emotionalizing. I like digital images fine. But there is something immediately old about an image made with black and white film. Everything, it says, was better back then.
I plan to make more images with the hundred black and white film cameras I have. It is a promise.
O.K. So I worked on those images in the morning. Scanning them took a long, long time. I had two space heaters cranked up trying to keep my 1926 wooden house with high ceilings warm. . . enough. The day was not yet cold, so I was able to keep it at a comfortable 69 degrees. Comfortable enough.
By noon, many images scanned, I put on my clothes and went to the gym. After an hour of aerobic workout and another twenty minutes of stretching, I came home to eat leftover steak kabob wrapped in bacon front the night before. Of course I'd forgotten that I didn't have a working microwave, so I showered and came out to eat it cold. With a beer. It is a perfect formula for an afternoon nap, but I was awakened twice by phone calls, so the nap was a failure. The afternoon slipping away, I decided to be productive. I stopped at the old fashioned hardware store in my own hometown and got a whisk broom. Chuckle if you will, but my cat is getting to be messier all the time. There are always little pieces of cat food around her bowl and litter around her box. Oh, the whisk broom.
While I was there, I took a quick trip down the Boulevard just to see what a the crowd would look like on the first crisp day of autumn. Cool weather must do something to people for the crowd was large and mostly unobjectionable. Pretty even. And there I was for awhile, recharging my batteries, ready to help.
After the brief sojourn among the throng, I bolted to The Radio Shack. I needed a new landline telephone, and wonder of wonders they had them for under $20. I hold my breath to see how long it will work, but who uses a landline any more anyway? Coming back toward my own neighborhood, I stopped at the "health food" store where I picked up needed potions and lotions and vitamins and other elixirs. Dropped off some laundry at the dry cleaners, then went to the studio to sleeve prints and look for a missing battery charger for one of my cameras.
And the autumn light began to fade. Time, I felt, for a Campari and a book. The air was getting colder, the wind gustier. I didn't want much for the night. Dinner and drink. I felt no longing for anything other than a little warmth.
And in a while, I set the clocks back and went to bed.
The night turned cold and the little heaters couldn't keep up. My bedroom was chilly. The damp cold of the south that requires more heat than should be normal. Sleep, wake, sleep, wake.
And then it was Six. Five. Why do they fuck with the time. It is maliciousness. You cannot kid yourself about that. It is a wicked malice in the cold, shrunken hearts of old conservative men who are only a step above kidnappers and child molesters. And I would suggest. . . many of them are that, too.
Up at five, the house too cold, I turned on the oven to 500 degrees and left the door open a quarter way. Sitting in the dining room, reading the news, I began to feel the heat rubbing against the back of my neck and shoulders. It smelled like I was burning pies, but there was no help for that. Warmth. Delicious warmth.
And then in the darkness, my internet went out. I unplugged the modem, thinking it would be that, but it didn't do the trick. Had I paid my bill? I had no way of knowing. Who keeps track of such things? I grabbed my cell phone and pulled up the number for my provider. I put it on speaker and started to work. I found the charger for my cell phone under a mess in my study. I pulled out some scanner trays and cut glass trying to find a way to scan my long Xpan negatives. I put on music from my iTunes library.
Half an hour later, the cable provider answered the phone. There was trouble in my neighborhood said the operator. Was I staying warm? No, I told her, it was awful at my house, cold and internet-less. She told me that she lived in an apartment complex and that too many people were trying to heat their units, she guessed, for the electricity kept going off and on all night. When she got up, she said, it was freezing in her apartment. Nice girl. She would get me my internet back just as soon as she could. Technicians were on the way.
Now the sun is up, the internet working, the house warmed. My mother is out of town, so there will be no formal dinner tonight. I may make a vegetable stew for myself, but maybe not. It would, though, warm the house.
That is how my life is rolling along right now. It is a mishmash of ups and downs. I checked the pile of mail on my floor and found something from the orthopedic office. My surgery is scheduled for 3:30 in the afternoon. I hadn't asked. But I do not like that very much. I had just assumed I would be early in the day. I am supposed to quit eating and drinking at eleven o'clock the night before. Fuck. Misery and suffering. I'll wake up from the anesthesia in the dark that day, and come home slobbery. They will need to give me many good drugs for that evening. And then the road to recovery. I have too many doubts and fears. But what is there to do? You get dealt a hand. It is shit. You discard three and hope for better, but you know the odds. They are stacked in the wrong direction. What can you do?
Seems it will be dark again soon. I have things I'd better do.
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